She stood at the centre of the room in yesterday’s gown, her hair bound back in a rough knot, the blanket pulled around her shoulders like a shawl. He was grateful for the blanket. It covered her entirely, and he did not have to contend with whatever the damp gown beneath it had done to its shape overnight.
Her boots were on. She held herself with her arms beneath the wool and her chin level, and she tipped her head towards the cot. “I did not put myself there.”
“No.”
“You carried me down?”
“The gallery floor is not a bed.”
She frowned. “I did not ask to be carried. You could have awakened me.”
“You were in my way, both before and after you fell asleep. Waking you would not have improved the situation.”
The fire he had rebuilt before dawn still burned, though low. The room held enough warmth to reveal, by contrast, how cold the gallery had been. She stood between the fire and the cot, and whatever she was managing behind that level gaze—the memory of waking in an unfamiliar place, the awareness of what his hands had been required to do in order to move her there—she did not reveal.
Then her brow creased. “Oh... The cottage.”
“I have been down.”
“And?”
“The chimney is destroyed. The south seam has opened further. The floor is under water. Your trunk and its contents are soaked through.”
Her jaw worked once. “My gowns.”
“Ruined, or near enough.”
“The cloak my aunt—” She stopped. “All of it?”
“All of it. You have what you are wearing.”
She turned from him and crossed to the table where her books lay. She touched the spine of one—the Shakespeare—as though confirming that this, at least, had survived. Her hand remained there.
“Mrs Hargreaves will come up this morning,” she said, not turning from the books. “She will go to the cottage.”
“I have wired the door.”
She turned then, and her eyes were sharp. “Wired it?”
“From the outside. It will hold against the wind. It will not hold against Mrs Hargreaves.”
“No.” Miss Bennet crossed her arms beneath the blanket. “Nothing holds against Mrs Hargreaves.”
She moved to the narrow window and looked out. The mist was thinning. Below, the path from the village lay empty, but it would not remain so for long. “The exterior walls are sound,” she said. “The roof line—does the breach show from the path?”
“The south seam sits below the eave. You would not see it unless you stood directly beneath and looked up.”
“And the chimney?”
“Intact from the exterior. The collapse is internal. From outside, the stack appears whole.”
Her face went still. He watched her gaze turn inward—the eyes narrowing, the jaw setting, the whole expression composing itself into something harder and more deliberate than the woman who had touched the Shakespeare’s spine three breaths ago.
“Then the cottage looks habitable from the outside. I will tell Mrs Hargreaves the chimney smoked terribly in the storm, and I do not trust the flue for cooking until a mason has examined it. That is true. I will say I am spending my days at the tower learning the property.” She paused long enough to level a firm look at him. “Also, true.”
“And where do you propose to sleep?”
“Here.”
